Additional details of the present terrible plight of Polish Jewry is given by a correspondent in a recent article in the Berlin Jewish “Central-Verein Zeitung,” who declares that out of the three million Polish Jews, more than one million is deprived of any means of livelihood, while another million doesn’t earn enough to live decently.
“From five to eight persons often live in the damp air holes of cellars in Warsaw,” says the correspondent. “Sickly and tubercular, having no bread to eat, to say nothing of their being able to afford a doctor and medicine, many of them spend here the last days of their miserable lives. At every step in the Jewish quarter one meets lean, emaciated old men and children clothed in rags, who in Winter time suffer terribly from the cold. The few unhygienic old people’s and children’s homes cannot take in even a small portion of these unfortunates.
These people have given up every hope for a better existence; only the purely animal instinct of self-preservation, and above all the religious prohibition of suicide, keep them alive. But that the suffering is so great that it conquers these instincts and prohibitions is proven by the frightful increase of suicides as shown by statistics. In Warsaw alone last year 891 Jews (300 men and 591 women) committed suicide, whereas among the Christian population, which is three times as large as the Jewish population, only 790 suicides were recorded.”
After reviewing all the reasons for the present economic plight of Polish Jewry, the correspondent says:
“The total picture is frightful: Out of three millions of Jews, more than one million has absolutely no means of livelihood; another million doesn’t earn enough to keep body and soul together; and only the third million is still in a position to maintain itself.”
The correspondent sees one ray of hope in the present situation of Polish Jewry, and that is in the fact that the great need there is forcing the Jewish youth to begin to look differently upon physical labor and to abandon the tradition that a Jew must engage either in the learned professions or in business. He finds a great desire among the Jewish youth of Poland today to engage in physical, productive work.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
